Video - Shopkeeper sees off gun raider - by telling him not to be silly

This is the terrifying moment a shop worker saw off a masked raider waving a gun – by telling him not to be “silly”.

Brave Dawn Harris held her nerve when the dark-clad robber demanded cash and he left empty-handed, a court heard. Alex Steffens, aged 23, brandished a BB gun in the corner store but Dawn said she thought it was a real weapon. Working alone at night, she told him that she had cashed up for and there was no money in the till. Dawn, aged 43, said after the case: “A friend who was in the shop at the time said to me that I told him ‘Don’t be silly’. Obviously I was a bit scared, but I just told him the truth.” A judge who jailed Steffens for four years said she deserved “phenomenal credit”. And the defendant’s barrister called her “brave” while his client was “cowardly”.